Children's Cognitive Development May Be Affected By Marital Stress At Home

Children who are exposed to martial stress at an early age may have more difficulty regulating attention and emotion, according to a new study by researchers at Auburn University and Catholic University of America.

Marital conflict, and the stress children feel being caught up in it, can have adverse effects on children's mental and intellectual development, the researchers determined by studying a field of 251 children from two-parent homes.

The researchers asked children to report on their exposure to marital conflict when they were eight years old, including information on frequency, intensity and lack of conflict resolution between their parents.

By measuring the respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) - an index of activity in the parametric nervous system, which responds to stress and has been linked to the ability to regulate attention and emotion - the researchers were able to gauge children's levels of stress.

The families in the study were a sampling of various social and economic backgrounds.

Children's ability to rapidly solve problems and quickly see patterns in new information was measured at ages eight, nine and 10 year old.

The children who witnessed more marital conflict when they were eight years old showed less adaptive RSA activity when they were nine years old, but this was only true for children who had a lower resting RSA.

The children with lower resting RSA who also showed less responsive stress systems were found to develop mental and intellectual ability more slowly.

"The findings provide further evidence that stress affects the development of the body's stress response systems that help regulate attention, and that how these systems work is tied to the development of cognitive ability," said J. Benjamin Hinnant, assistant professor of psychology at the Catholic University of America and one of the researchers.

The study is published in the journal Child Development.